


You and I (heart stop beating)

by lovelight (Delenaley)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Enemies to Lovers, Fist Fights, Human Sacrifice, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Soul Bond, Unspecified Setting, i'm not joking there's several fist fights
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-05-18 19:24:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19341025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delenaley/pseuds/lovelight
Summary: Kun used to have a mother. She had been beautiful, she had been kind, she had been patient, and above all, she wasselfless.Then the people decided to sacrifice her to a bloodthirsty God and left Kun with nothing.





	You and I (heart stop beating)

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is dedicated to the susan boyle fancafe (u guys know u who are) and our very own vampire god, taemin. whose song is also used as a title.
> 
> unbeta'ed, we die like men.

The memory of his mother takes form in an obscure fog that constantly clouds Kun's mind, swirling and spinning inside his skull with no way out. There's distant, blurry scenes of him being picked up and cradled, hiding his face on the crook of her neck and the vague feeling of her soft kisses on his scraped knees.

Kun doesn't remember what she looked like, and his father didn't like sitting through paintings, he also thought they cost too much. So he looks at his reflection, in his bedroom mirror, or down at the riverbank whenever he needs to fetch buckets of water.

He would run his fingers across his own features, tries to map out the way he looks, and piece a puzzle that can never be solved. He has his father's eyebrows, and nothing else. Everyone did say he was the spitting image of her, but without a solid comparison, Kun decides not to take the words to heart. But his mother had been beautiful, he's sure of it.

Then there were the little things. 

Trivial, seemingly unimportant things that he keeps confined deep inside his heart, where no one would be able to rip them out. She'd kept extra cookies for him even when his father told her not to, had pulled him into her arms and taught him what things were called, repeating them when Kun did not understand and tended to his every question with a warm smile. The images in his head is blurred, but his heart held on to every bit of love she had poured toward him as a child.

Kun used to have a mother. She had been beautiful, she had been kind, she had been patient, and above all, she was  _ selfless _ .

Then the people decided to sacrifice her to a bloodthirsty God and left Kun with nothing.

♡

Kun hated Youngho Seo for many reasons.

He'd already been a head taller since they were nine years old, and had only grown taller since. Youngho would merely stood and watch whenever his older cousins picked on Kun's best friend for the simplest, most unnecessary reasons. He'd always settle his heavy, indifferent gaze on Kun, following his movement whenever they're within each other's vicinity, does it long enough to irritate Kun, and then he'd walk out from the scene like nothing happened.

Youngho Seo was also the son of someone important.

At the tender age of twelve, Kun didn't understand much about what his father said regarding Youngho's father, but it did plant a seed inside his heart, continuously growing into something ugly and rotten. It taught him that those people shouldn't be as important as they are considered. After all, important people had come to the decision to sacrifice his mother to the God.

And Youngho's father had been the most important of them all.

♡

By the age of fourteen, Kun came to the conclusion that their village likes violence, lives and breathes the scent of sweat and blood. And they throw their little boys in the middle of it, makes them fight each other until one of two yields or crosses the line in the ground. The elders call it training, preparing them to be men. 

Kun thinks they're just insatiable. Vicious and bloodthirsty.

Kun had been volunteering to replace his best friend since they became old enough for the fights, exactly a year before. In the beginning, Ten would try to stop him, but Kun's never been one to heed warnings. He'd grown up stubborn and vengeful, and lets it show in his every choice, his every move.

( _ 'Unless someone volunteers in your place, you must fight.' _

No one would volunteer for Kun, he doesn't need it either. Ten's all he has, though, and Kun would be damned if Ten gets hurt because of a stupid brawl.

And the other boys would  _ destroy _ Ten. They'd defeat him and then some more, they wouldn't stop even if they won. They'd fuck him over just because they like it, instead of to simply reign victorious. Kun hates them with every fibre of his being.)

He has to fight twice more than he needs to every week. 

Kun fights bigger boys, older boys, scrape his knees and skin his elbows. There's no mother to kiss the wounds better anymore, but Ten's always there with his grandparents' salve and a roll of bandage, sometimes stitches when he needs them. A serene smile in place as he works his fingers over Kun's injuries.

The same couldn't be said about his father, who had been hiding under the influence of alcohol ever since his mother's death, enveloped by the darkness of their cabin. The old man sits, cowers in the corner of Kun's childhood home.

His loose, drunken mouth mutters endless complaints and hatred of the world, but never once doing anything about it. He'd pat Kun on the back for his wins but lets the wrath consume him whenever Kun loses to Youngho.

Kun's defeated every single boy who faced him, opponents who are just as helpless as he is about their participation in the fights. He learns to smash his fist into their faces, learns to knock the wind out of them with his knees. Kun learns to fight and to make sure the pain  _ lasts _ . With every boy Kun knocks down, Youngho follows, and they meet at the very top for a final match. 

He has defeated every single boy in their village, except for Youngho.

Youngho is the biggest in their age range, stronger and faster. Kun knows it's his own temper, the rotten fruit of hatred rooted deep inside his heart, causing him to see red whenever he so much as crosses path with Youngho. The reckless, childish anger that blinds him from reacting the way he should, constantly keeps him from winning against the older boy.

♡

His ears are ringing. 

There's a distant shout begging him to  _ 'just yield, Kun!',  _ Ten's distinct tone helps Kun pick out his voice from the deafening cheers of the crowd surrounding them. Kun blinks — _ once, twice _ _ — _ until his vision clears, and sees that none of his limbs have crossed the carefully organized pebbles that makes up the fight circle.

Even after so many years of doing this, the number of people watching the fights never ceases to overwhelm Kun. There’s people standing all around the circle, sitting on the logs a bit further. There’s even people perched on the tree branches, opting for a higher point of view.

Kun barely notices the hesitant expression on Youngho's face as he presses his palms to the ground and stands up, gritting his teeth when pain shoots up his side, the impact from when he collided with the hard ground. His knees are shaking when he finally straightens his form. They've been at this for too long, this is the longest fight Kun's ever been in with Youngho.

His entire body is screaming at him to stop, and his arms are nearly useless at his side, trembling nearly as much as his knees. Kun fixes his hardened gaze on the boy across the circle — Youngho looks at him with the same indifferent look he's always worn since they were children, it infuriates Kun to no end — and soldiers on. Youngho moves forward at the same time as he does, his hands balled into fists, raised at his sides.

Youngho throws a mean punch, packed with enough force to topple one's balance in one precise hit, no matter where the punch lands. He fights like he means it, like it was something he looked forward to instead of a stupid tradition their village elders obliges their boys to participate in. 

Kun sees more than feels the punch, enough to knock him down for the nth time today. Ten's voice screams for him again from somewhere in the crowd, caught between a horrified gasp and a sob. 

His body keels over from the force, and his vision fades into black.

♡

When he wakes up next, it's to the familiar sight of the clearing, now devoid of crowds and the commotion that came with it. Ten is kneeling by his side, bandaging one of his injured knees. Several unsealed jars are scattered nearby. Kun notices the pungent scent of Ten's ointment immediately and exhales a bit too harshly, feels his chest tighten with the action.

"Stay still," Ten chides without even looking his way, already used to doing this. Tending to Kun's injuries, and facing his childish antics when treated. "It smells like shit but it heals."

Kun pouts but stays put.

He lost.  _ Again _ .

Kun silently reminds himself that it doesn't matter, his pride shouldn’t be anywhere in his list of priorities. Ten is safe, and that's all that matters. 

His lovely Ten, who only liked dancing and painting, who moves with the grace of a predator carefully stalking their prey, and never shuts his mouth when it comes to what he believes in. He reminds Kun of the sparks of fire on scraped wood before it lights up, sharp and frisky, and Kun loves Ten like he loves nothing else. Ten is all that matters.

Kun knows if his mother was alive, she'd love Ten like he was her own. He always tells Ten as much, breathes in relief when Ten's lips stretch upwards to form a bright smile. And it makes all the bruises and scars worth it.

(There's an insistent little voice in his mind, reminding him that he wouldn't have made it to the top alongside Youngho if he didn't mean it either. That he wouldn't have made it this far on the matches if he didn't like winning.)

When he walks out of the clearing, an arm slung over Ten’s shoulder, he says, “You haven’t painted in a while, let’s go to the meadow tomorrow.”

Ten looks up at him questioningly, then eyes the bruises that had bloomed on his skin with a raised brow.

Kun sends his most charming smile at Ten and hopes that it’s enough.

♡

They turn twenty years old, and the life Kun and Ten has built for themselves shatters before their very eyes.

The elders, the very same disgusting cowards that voted on his mother's death, had picked Ten to follow in her footsteps.

(Ten had dragged him to the clearing, sat him down on one of the longs and fell to his knees in front of Kun. 

_ “Kun,” _ he had called tentatively, like approaching a wild animal. “They chose me. The guards came over and delivered the letter. I’m the next sacrifice.”)

Kun had expected fury, hot and blinding. Devastation took its place instead. It came in waves, each one bigger than before. Kun has half a mind to storm into the main hall and scream his lungs out at the elders. What had he ever done to them for them to take away everyone he's ever loved? What gave them the right to vote on someone's life like they owned it?

"Kun, don't do anything," Ten warns, his sweet voice edging on a threat, hands tightly gripping Kun's own. Through the years, he's perfected the art of taming Kun in his worst.

And because Kun knows Ten better than himself, he replies, "You don't want to do this."

"Yeah?" Ten looks away, bottom lip trembling. Kun’s been so caught up in his own sorrow that he forgot to consider what it might feel like for Ten, being chosen as a sacrifice by a village that never respected his existence.

"Ten," Kun breathes, disentangles one of his hands from Ten's grip and reaches up to make Ten face him. "Your life isn't worth some votes from cowardly old fucks,  _ hell _ , this village and the people in it has never done anything for you and I, so why should you die for them?"

_ Why should we die for them?, _ Kun thought. They'd be killing two birds with one stone in this ritual. There wouldn't be a Kun without Ten, and vice versa. If Ten dies, Kun dies with him.

Ten's gaze softens, and his look turns into something more heartbreaking and desperate, his voice finally cracks when he speaks next. "Well, I have no choice now, do I?"

He laughs, but it's empty and mirthless. Kun hears it turns into a sob before he sees it, and quickly gathers Ten in his arms, pulling him on top of his lap.

"I'll get you out of this," Kun promises, running his hand through Ten's raven hair, the other drawing circles on the boy's back. He's proven it from time to time, and it won't stop now.

Ten's sobs gets louder, wrecked and hurt. "And then  _ what _ ?" he asks, voice muffled from where he's burying his face on Kun's shoulder. "We will face prosecution and die anyway."

"We won't, we're going to escape from this village," Kun insists, pulling back from their embrace. Ten looks up with red-rimmed, watery eyes and gives Kun a questioning look.

"What if the God comes for us?" he whispers, fear seeping into his voice.

Kun purses his own lips, he's never dignified any questions regarding the village's belief with an answer, became immune to it over the years, only going along with it for the sake of politeness. But he's never lied to Ten, never found it necessary even when they perceived things differently.

He doesn't believe in it, not since every piece of it was ripped out of him when his mother was taken away from him at seven years old. Kun watches how the sacrifice destroys families every few years, how the family left behind became empty, devoid of happiness, living day by day like a puppet whose strings were cut. Surviving, but not exactly alive — and sees himself in them.

Kun doesn't see the appeal in people's blind fear being a form of worship. For years, he's silently referred to the bloodthirsty, demanding entity as a monster. It took his mother, and now he won't let it take away his best friend.

"If he comes for us." Kun cups Ten's face in his palms and smiles down at the boy. "We kill him."

**Author's Note:**

> me writing this fic: kun is one angry boi,, pissed off all the time baby!! looking for fight buddies to meet him at the clearing near the river at midnight. 
> 
> apologies for the lack of johnkun in this chapter. there will be more explanation (and johnkun) in the next chapters. if you made it this far, thank you and i hope you will look forward to future chapters as well!
> 
> come fight me on [cc](http://curiouscat.me/layverse) and [twt!](http://twitter.com/layverse) ☆☆☆


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